3/2018 1
Science & Technology Studies
ISSN 2243-4690
Co-ordinating editor
Salla Sariola (University of Oxford, UK; University of Helsinki, Finland)
Editors
Torben Elgaard Jensen (Aalborg University at Copenhagen, Denmark) Sampsa Hyysalo (Aalto University, Finland)
Jörg Niewöhner (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany) Franc Mali (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Alexandre Mallard (Ecole des Mines ParisTech, France) Martina Merz (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria) Sarah de Rijcke (Leiden University, Netherlands)
Antti Silvast (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Estrid Sørensen (Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Germany) Helen Verran (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Brit Ross Winthereik (IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
Assistant editor
Heta Tarkkala (University of Eastern Finland, Finland; University of Helsinki, Finland)
Editorial board
Nik Brown (University of York, UK)
Miquel Domenech (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain) Aant Elzinga (University of Gothenburg, Sweden)
Steve Fuller (University of Warwick, UK)
Marja Häyrinen-Alastalo (University of Helsinki, Finland) Merle Jacob (Lund University, Sweden)
Jaime Jiménez (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico) Julie Thompson Klein (Wayne State University, USA) Tarja Knuuttila (University of South Carolina, USA)
Shantha Liyange (University of Technology Sydney, Australia) Roy MacLeod (University of Sydney, Australia)
Reijo Miettinen (University of Helsinki, Finland)
Mika Nieminen (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Finland) Ismael Rafols (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
Arie Rip (University of Twente, The Netherlands) Nils Roll-Hansen (University of Oslo, Norway)
Czarina Saloma-Akpedonu (Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines) Londa Schiebinger (Stanford University, USA)
Matti Sintonen (University of Helsinki, Finland)
Fred Stewart (Westminster University, United Kingdom) Juha Tuunainen (University of Oulu, Finland)
Dominique Vinck (University of Lausanne, Switzerland) Robin Williams (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Teun Zuiderent-Jerak (Linköping University, Sweden)
Subscriptions
Subscriptions and enquiries about back issues should be addressed to:
Email: johanna.hokka@uta.fi
The subscription rates (2018) for access to the electronic journal is 40 euros for individual subscribers and 100 euros for institutional subscribers.
Copyright
Copyright holders of material published in this journal are the respective contributors and the Finnish Society for Science and Technology Studies. For permission to reproduce material from Science Studies, apply to the assistant editor.
Volume 31, Issue 3, 2018
Editorial
Salla Sariola
30th anniversary issue of Science & Technology Studies ... 2
Articles
Zdeněk Konopásek & al
Lost in Translation: Czech Dialogues by Swedish Designa ... 5
Laura Maxim
More than a Scientifi c Movement: Socio-Political Infl uences
on Green Chemistry Research in the United States and France ...24
Sian Sullivan
Making Nature Investable: from Legibility to Leverageability
in Fabricating ‘Nature’ as ‘Natural Capital’ ... 47
Book review
Brit Ross Winthereik & Helen Verran
Reviewing S&TS book reviews ...77
Visit our web-site at
www.sciencetechnologystudies.org
Editorial
Salla Sariola
You are holding the 30th anniversary issue of Science & Technology Studies.
With this editorial the journal wishes to thank the readers, authors, reviewers, book reviewers, editors, and the STS community at large for its longstanding presence. Thank you and congratulations S&TS!
At 30 years of age, the journal stands among the oldest STS journals currently published. For example, Science, Technology and Human Values was began in 1967, Social Studies of Science in 1970, Science as Culture in 1987, Science, Technology and Society in 1996, and the Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies was published fi rst in 2013.
Beginning and international developments
The first issue of Science & Technology Studies was published in 1988, initiated by the Finnish Association of Science and Technology Studies. At start, the journal was entitled Science Studies.
The journal was initiated by an international group with Finnish lead; it was aimed at global audiences but with particular inputs and aims towards strengthening Nordic STS. Science Studies was published biannually in English. In the fi rst issue of the journal (1988), Veronika Stolte-Heis- kanen, the fi rst editor articulates this as follows:
The last decades have witnessed a growing interest and increased research activity in the fi eld of science studies in the Nordic countries...
The (Finnish) Society decided that the time has come to establish a journal in order to disseminate information to an international public about research and ongoing discussion in science studies in Finland and in other Nordic countries...The aim is to eventually institutionalize the journal as a joint Scandinavian publication...our goals are to stimulate and strengthen science studies in the Nordic countries, to intensify contacts and
exchange of ideas among scholars working in this fi eld, and to inform the wider international scientifi c community about science studies carried out in the Nordic environment.
The journal internationalized rapidly, however.
In 1994 the Nordic editorial board was comple- mented with members from beyond Scandinavia, to include, among others, John Ziman. In 2/2005, former Chief Editor Marja Häyrinen-Alestalo writes in an editorial that:
The broad perspective that was adopted during the fi rst years was a refl ection of analyses made by the journal’s Scandinavian authors. Soon, however, we felt a need for broader internationalization. We presented our plans to highly recognised
international scholars and asked them to join in the project.
Throughout the 2000s, Science Studies grew by both published numbers and diversity: as the number of papers submitted to the journal increased, range of themes and concerns also
expanded. Hyysalo & Knuuttila write in an edito- rial in 2/2009 that “90% of our papers and review- ers come from outside Finland.”
In 2011, the editorial team welcomed three international new editors, and has increased their number ever since, to the current number of nine editors (one of whom is also the coordinating editor), plus two book editors.
In 2012, the journal became the house journal of the European Association for the Social Study of Science and Technology (EASST). At this point the journal’s name was changed to Science &
Technology Studies to refl ect its content that also addressed an interest in technologies. Moreover, it was felt important for the editorial team to refl ect European diversity: a policy of Europe-wide repre- sentation in the editorial team was set in place.
In refl ection of EASST’s Europe-wide focus, the editorial team now comprises members from all major linguistic and national networks and hubs of STS: Nordic, German speaking, French-speaking, Dutch, British, Southern, and Eastern European regions. The journal does not aim to only to publish work by those situated in European universities, or research focused on Europe, however. The authors’
locations underline the international reach of S&TS. Scholars publishing in S&TS span from being situated in universities across Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Colombia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, and US. In terms of numbers, Europe, and north Europe in particular, is strongly present, with also large number of papers coming from Northern America.
As the long list of authors’ locations attests to, the journal’s content scope is global. Indeed,
research is reported from further sites and locations as well: translation of STS concepts across diff erent cultures, epistemic traditions, and systems of practice, also beyond the ‘developed world’, has been a topic that authors in S&TS have contributed to, e.g. in the editorial of Global Health and STS special issue in 3/2017; and the prologue by Amit Prasad in 4/2017. Work remains to be done, however, to encourage authors based in African countries to be present in the fi eld and to refl ect upon intersectionality in STS, both in the topics of study as well as STS’s own knowledge production practices.
Special issues and key debates
The journal has contributed to new and emerg- ing fi elds of STS, particularly by giving space to these ideas in special issues. The journal has pub- lished 15 special issues during the 30 years cov- ering topics such as: knowledge infrastructures, university-society relations, global health, politics of innovation for environmental sustainability, energy in society, cultural analysis as interven- tion, gender at scientifi c work places, standardiza- tion and social texture, architecture, open source, feminist technoscience, computer models and simulation, ageing and technology, antiscientifi c sentiments, and evaluation. Exciting forthcoming special issues include numbers and numbering, citizen science, foreknowledge, and expertise.
Possibly owing to the journal’s Nordic roots, arising from countries known for their gender equality, gender has featured prominently in the journal’s content and editorial presence. Special issues topics have focused on developing feminist technoscience scholarship at large, and addressed gender relations in academic knowledge produc- tion. In addition to the special issues, numerous Table 1. Author’s locations 1988-2018
Continent 1988-1998 1999-2008 2009-2018 Total
Europe 100 120 262 482
North America 16 28 41 85
Australia 3 1 14 18
South America 7 4 4 15
Asia 5 5 10
Africa 1 1
scholars have emphasized the persisting inequi- ties in science and technology, shown how power operates in research networks, and the ways in which innovations gender and are gendered. If the journal’s own numbers are an indication, of the current editorial team, 50% of the members are women and in the journal’s history, four of the six coordinating editors have been women. Of the authors publishing in the journal throughout the 30 years, 46% have been women. During the fi rst decade, the diff erence was as unequal as 77%
of men to 23% women. More recently, however, since year 2009, the number of women authors becomes slightly higher than men at 53%.
Open knowledge
The journal is at the forefront open access pub- lishing in STS journals. The entire archive of S&TS is free to download through the journal website, without embargo on any issues. The journal is also free to publish, meaning that the journal does not
charge publication fees from authors. During the early years of the journal’s association with EASST, the last issue was reserved for EASST members as a member benefi t. The council debated the role of publishing as a ‘commons’, however, as something that should be available all of those interested in STS as a fi eld, rather than restricted to paying members. As a result of these conversations the embargo was removed and in 2017 the journal became fully open access.
The journal is published without ties to commercial publishing houses. The publication is managed on an open source software based platform called Open Journal Systems (OJS) that is developed by the Public Knowledge Project. Open access is possible thanks to the fi nancial support of EASST and the Finnish Science Foundation via the Finnish Society for Science and Technology Studies.
Once again, thank you for all readers, writers, reviewers, guest editors, and editors of Science &
Technology Studies. For fruitful years ahead!
Figure 1: Gender distribution of S&TS contributors: the overall distribution and distribution of contributors according to decades. Compiled by Prerna Srigyan.
Jensen, 2013) as a starting point for our case study on stakeholder involvement. We discuss how an established participatory procedure is made to travel from one national context to another.
We are interested in how the ‘technology’ itself
Lost in Translation: Czech Dialogues by Swedish Design
Zdeněk Konopásek
Center for Theoretical Study, Charles University & The Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic/
zdenek@konopasek.net
Linda Soneryd
Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Karel Svačina
Center for Theoretical Study, Charles University & The Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic
Abstract
This study explores the journey of a model for stakeholder involvement called RISCOM. Originally developed within the fi eld of radioactive waste management in Sweden, it was later used in the Czech Republic to re-establish public dialogue in the process of siting a geological repository. This case off ers an opportunity to empirically study the fragility and ambiguous results of organized spread of public involvement across various domains of technological innovation and national contexts. We show how three circumstances – (1) the ambition to make RISCOM an internationally used model for public dialogue, (2) the specifi c situation in the Czech siting process, and (3) the short-lived and limited success of the subsequent Czech dialogues by Swedish design – were intrinsically related and sustained each other. Better understanding of such complexities might contribute to a more realistic attitude toward technologized democracy, i.e., toward practices of public deliberation increasingly becoming instrumental, transferable, and depoliticized.
Keywords: socio-technical controversy, public dialogue, nuclear waste management, sociology of translation
Introduction
Transferring an elaborate design to a different setting and putting it into use out of its original context is an intricate business with uncertain results. We take this well-known STS lesson (Bijker and Law, 1992; De Laet and Mol, 2000; Nielsen and
is being transformed or translated during its dis- placement. Thus, we mobilize the relatively well- established imagery of technology transfer for the purpose of studying how formalized public involvement models are being spread across the EU. We argue that potential consequences of these activities can be problematic in specifi c ways. Namely that technologies of participation, transferable from country to country under super- vision of participatory experts, may easily contrib- ute to instrumentalization, depoliticization, and emptying of deliberative politics.
To make this argument empirically grounded, we present and critically discuss the story of how a Swedish design for public dialogue called RISCOM1 was transferred to the Czech Republic.
RISCOM, as a set of principles and recommenda- tions for structured and transparent communica- tion among stakeholders, was originally shaped during public debates on geological repositories of high-level nuclear waste in Sweden. After some time it entered the international arena: as part of several European projects it was proposed to facil- itate – and democratize – siting processes related to planned geological repositories in the Czech Republic and other East European countries. We will show that, on the one hand, RISCOM made an important achievement in the Czech case, since it helped to bring all the main actors to a discussion table after previous negotiations had completely crashed. On the other hand, RISCOM failed from a broader and more subtle perspective. Its appli- cation contributed to the subsequent shift toward more authoritative decision-making and another crisis of mutual trust in the Czech repository siting process.
The case study on RISCOM was part of a broader collective work on the European Commis- sion (EC) funded research project InSOTEC.2 Our data consist of documentation, interviews with key actors, and observations of various meetings and events. Data relating to the Czech Republic were collected by Zdeněk Konopásek and Karel Svačina and the Swedish data were collected by Linda Soneryd. RISCOM was fi rst implemented in the Czech Republic within an EC funded project Arenas for Risk Governance (ARGONA, 2006- 2009). Soneryd was involved in the ARGONA project studying the development of RISCOM in
Sweden (see Elam et al., 2008). The implementa- tion of RISCOM in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia was also an element of yet another EC-funded project Implementing Public Partici- pation Approaches in Radioactive Waste Disposal (IPPA, 2011-2013). Several participants in the IPPA project were also members of the InSOTEC research team. On the one hand, the existence of this concurrent implementation project provided us with many useful exchanges and experi- ences. On the other hand it situated us into a rather delicate situation. By critically analysing the eff orts to implement RISCOM in the Czech Republic, we were necessarily and openly putting in question some key aspects of these EC-funded eff orts. Despite this, all the concerned colleagues were willing to talk and discuss. We very much appreciate their collaboration under such circum- stances.
On translation and treason
We suggest that the Czech dialogues by Swedish design need to be assessed against complexities that unfold before our eyes as soon as the pro- cess of transferring RISCOM from one setting to another is understood as its translation. The con- cept of translation is a crucial part of the vocabu- lary associated with actor-network theory, ANT (Callon, 1986; Latour, 1986) and with ANT-inspired studies of technology transfer in particular (e.g.
Law, 2006). Simply put, actor-network theory helps to understand how success or failure – in terms of truth, continuity, durability, resistance or reality – is practically and specifi cally achieved.
How is it that things come to work? More spe- cifi cally, in relation to the problem of technology transfer, how does it happen that some technol- ogy is eff ectively transmitted to a new setting?
The general ANT-like answer is: because it was translated. In relation to our specifi c subject, to articulate RISCOM anew, in a new setting, means articulating it diff erently.3 The issue is not that one simply has to adapt the transferred technology to meet new conditions and requirements. The pro- cess of translation always involves “displacement, drift, invention, mediation” and the creation of links “that did not exist before” that modify ele-
ments or agents since they are combined in new ways (De Laet and Mol, 2000; Latour, 1994: 32).
Thus, by defi nition, there is no transportation without transformation. It doesmatter, however, what specific transformations occur and how.
Translation can be good or bad, better or worse.
Faithful or unfaithful. Processes of translation always in some sense entail betrayal or treason (Galis and Lee, 2014; Law, 1999), more or less.
We can therefore talk about failure. Or success – if the translation is done well.4 In our case, for instance, the communication model transferred to the Czech settings may or may not function in the same (expected) way as the ‘original’ Swedish RISCOM. Or, eventually, the involved actors may even start doubting to what extent the object in their hands metamorphosed into something else, into a completely diff erent procedure deserving its own name and identity.
Thus, locating a technology in a new context is a complex and risky movement, involving subtle transformations, by necessity not only of the trav- elling object itself, but also of those who want to make it travel and those who want to use it in the new settings (Callon, 1986). The perspec- tive of translation allows us to look at the case of RISCOM’s transfer with an understanding of its complexities and ambivalences. We believe that such an understanding is important for a critical, and yet constructive analysis of contemporary participative practice. Moreover, following the intricate trajectories of the RISCOM story off ers a specifi c opportunity. With the help of the concept of translation, we hope to avoid picking up perhaps the easiest possible explanation of what happened to RISCOM on the way to the Czech Republic, namely that a well-established element of democratic culture was simply confronted with the underdeveloped (post-communist) political culture in the target country.5 Although such an explanation would not completely miss the point, it would defi nitely miss the opportunity for a broader lesson about stakeholder involvement – about what happens when it becomes a piece of political technology, eventually transferable across borders and various settings.6
Spreading public involvement models: Technologizing democracy
Stakeholder involvement and public participation has become a yardstick for the quality and legiti- macy of governance across a number of policy domains.7 Celebrated in general, participation nonetheless attracts critical attention of contem- porary analysts (e.g., Irwin, 2006; Sundqvist, 2014;
Wynne, 2007). In our paper we join these critical examinations by focusing on how the expansion of forms for invited participation like RISCOM can turn public involvement into a predominantly technical issue.
This ‘technological’ aspect of participation is of course nothing new. No matter that confl icts intrinsically belong to politics (Hirschman, 1994) and that a confl ict often directly precedes, as a triggering event, the introduction of profession- ally orchestrated deliberative exercises, invited public involvement is often framed as attempts at neutralizing, avoiding or preventing controver- sies (Kleinman et al., 2011). The organizers of these events expect from them that they would serve as lubricants with the help of which the entire deci- sion-making machinery runs smoother and less contested. Public deliberation then gets emptied from its political nature. Indeed, it gets depoliti- cized. As noted by Andrew Barry (2001: 7), “the deployment of technology is often seen as a way of avoiding the noise and irrationality of political confl ict” – and this is true even for technologies of participation.8
The idea of technologized public deliberation events significantly relates to what Alexander Bogner (2012) terms ‘lab participation’: “a form of participation organized by professional partici- pation specialists, taking place under controlled conditions and largely without reference to public controversies, political participation demands, or individual concerns” (Bogner, 2012: 510). Lab participation is characterized by being often organized in the context of a research project and funded by a third party, and by being very well- documented. Since respective events neither have been initiated or framed by public concerns nor have any impact on decision-making and seldom invite grassroots activists or NGOs, they are said to
“bear practically no relation to the world outside”
(Bogner, 2012: 511). According to Bogner, lab-
participation has deeply paradoxical and not quite convincing results. Bogner’s concept is particu- larly relevant for us, since a ‘laboratory’ character of RISCOM, as we will explain soon, was explicitly formulated as one of its founding characteristics.
In other words, RISCOM was intended and specifi - cally designed as lab participation – and as such, with real eff ects in the political realm. Our case may therefore be taken as an opportunity to elaborate Bogner’s arguments and specify them further.
The laboratory nature of the RISCOM model
The background ideas of RISCOM are inspired by a simplifi ed version of Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action in combination with ele- ments of organizational theory (Espejo, 2007). The design is based on a set of principles9 and practical recommendations10 for making communication between stakeholders structured, transparent and meaningful. Among other things, it estab- lishes a ‘Reference Group’ and a ‘Working Group’
within the Reference Group. All the participants, i.e., the project team and members of the Refer- ence Group, have to sign agreements that oblige them to comply with the RISCOM principles.
RISCOM is therefore rather similar to many other recommendations for public dialogues about controversial issues. It is unique, however, by certain laboratory qualities, explicitly formu- lated and often emphasized by its authors. Since the beginning, it has been crucial for the RISCOM design that the involved parties feel that it is safe to enter the dialogue. To achieve such an eff ect, RISCOM tries to create a specific deliberative
“neutral arena” (Andersson and Wene, 2006), which has the form of a contained environment, estab- lished temporarily by the organizers to get the participants dis-connected from real-life politics and decisions. Within this laboratory space, partic- ipants commit themselves to act as equals, united by the respect toward ‘fair dialogue’. By means of such dialogue participants expose themselves to a challenging, and yet friendly mutual stretching.
With the help of stretching “ the force of the better argument” should become manifest and partici- pants’ perspectives may eventually get enriched,
shifted or even shaken. After RISCOM finishes its work, the stakeholders return to the realm of political struggle subtly transformed by the expe- rience of a ‘politically neutral’ dialogue, in which everything can be freely expressed, without the constraints of specifi c political tasks or interests (e.g. Andersson et al., 2011).
To sum up, the specific value of RISCOM is based on the idea that it allows what ordinary political engagement does not allow: uncon- strained exchange of arguments and views between equals. We could therefore understand RISCOM as a true and explicit lab-participation experiment in Bogner’s (2012) terms. Temporary detachment from real politics is, in fact, the main and even acknowledged eff ective force here, at least in theory.
The Swedish life of RISCOM
Nuclear waste management in Sweden11 has enjoyed a reputation of being more open and participatory than in many other countries (Daw- son and Darst, 2006). During the 1980s, however, the search for a suitable place for nuclear waste disposal was a technocratic endeavour insensitive to citizens in the concerned municipalities (Elam and Sundqvist, 2011). With the aim to gain more knowledge of the Swedish bedrock SKB (Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management co) made studies that included drilling, without the consent of the municipalities and with very insufficient information given to the population. This resulted in fi erce local protest and the implementer SKB had to stop the drillings before the investigations were completed. It was impossible for the nuclear waste company to continue with its investiga- tions and SKB changed its strategy to a ‘voluntary approach’ (Elam et al., 2010): in 1992 the com- pany sent a letter to all municipalities and asked if they were welcome to make site-investigations.
The letter made clear that the municipalities that allowed the company to make feasibility studies were neither obliged to agree to further investiga- tions nor to host a nuclear waste disposal facility.
Around the same time the government authorities (the Swedish inspectorate for nuclear activities, SKI, and the Swedish Radiation Protec- tion Agency, SSI) made their own interpretation
of the situation. The local protests had created a stalemate in the siting process, and it was obvious that ensuring the quality of the bedrock was not enough: acceptance was equally crucial.
This insight made the government authorities turn to dialogue. With the aim to explore what a siting process could look like that all actors could perceive as legitimate, the Swedish inspectorate for nuclear activities started the Dialogue project, which was a direct predecessor to the RISCOM model (SKI, 1993a; 1993b).
The Dialogue project took place over a few years in the beginning of the 1990s. It involved environmental organisations, municipalities and government authorities and it was organized as a simulated review process of an application concerning the fi nal disposal of nuclear waste, seeking permission to construct a fi nal disposal system (SKI, 1993a). SKI funded the project, hoping that it could lead to a common view around the decision-making process and a credible review process in the future.
The government authorities then continued to refi ne a design for dialogue through two research projects. RISCOM I (1996-1998) explored how nuclear waste management could be more trans- parent and engaged basically the same people that were involved in organizing the Dialogue project. RISCOM II was an EC funded research project (2000-2003) and involved testing the design for public dialogue on radioactive waste management in other countries. A few years later RISCOM guided public dialogue on another highly controversial issue – the planning and building of a new infrastructure for mobile telephone communication (Soneryd, 2008; Lezaun and Soneryd, 2007).
After this short excursion into a non-nuclear issue, the RISCOM model found its way back to nuclear waste again, when the Nuclear Waste Council decided to set up a Transparency programme during the late phases of the site selection phase. The aim of these hearings was to open up questions of relevance for long-term safety that had been little discussed at the public consultations organised by the nuclear waste company SKB, for example the question of alter- native technical concepts.
Overall, RISCOM and related dialogue forms have been relatively marginal to nuclear waste management in Sweden (Elam et al., 2008; Elam et al., 2010). Although the government authorities SKI and SSI have approached stakeholder involve- ment rather openly from 1990s and onwards, the nuclear waste company SKB has not shown much interest in RISCOM. The limits of the dialogue can be also seen in the lack of direct impact on real decision-making. Even if some of the RISCOM activities – for example the Transparency Programme organized by the Swedish Nuclear Waste Council (2007-2010) – did raise some chal- lenging issues, they never seriously challenged the pre-eminent position of SKB’s RD&D programme (cf. Elam and Sundqvist, 2009).
RISCOM travelling to the Czech Republic
The RISCOM model came to the Czech Republic in the middle of a governmental moratorium on the process of siting geological disposal. This morato- rium was declared in 2004, after previous nego- tiations had failed.12 The state agency RAWRA and the Nuclear Research Institute were invited to become participants in an EC project ARGONA (2006-2009), headed by the Swedish author of RISCOM.13 One of the main aims of this project was to “test and apply approaches to transpar- ency and participation by making explicit what it would mean to use the RISCOM model and other approaches within diff erent cultural and organiza- tional settings” (see ARGONA, project summary, undated).14 In order to achieve this, a ‘Refer- ence group’ was established in 2008. The group brought together various stakeholders from state organizations, municipalities, and NGOs.
The moratorium was concluded by an inter- national conference called “Towards geological disposal without confl ict” organized by RAWRA in November 2009. This event represented a ‘turn’ in the approach of RAWRA as the key implementing state organization. After technocratic measures, protests and moratorium, emphasis was now put on negotiation and dialogue. Representatives of RAWRA started to emphasise that without the consent of the municipalities, they would not go forward with site investigations. RISCOM and the
ARGONA project were quite important topics at the conference: several speakers appreciated their role in the Czech Republic, and called for contin- uing similar activities.
In about a year after the ARGONA project ended the RISCOM Reference Group found a successor:
a national “Working Group for dialogue about geological disposal” (WG) was established. It was initiated by RAWRA as an advisory body of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, seemingly outside the experimental logic introduced by the original RISCOM. But it was in many respects similar to the former Reference Group and already during its fi rst meeting it was suggested that the WG might become associated with a new EC-funded project, IPPA, which was just being prepared and for which the implementation of RISCOM in several post-communist European countries was a key task (Andersson et al., 2011; see also IPPA, undated). Although some members of the group did not necessarily have to be fully familiar with or even aware of RISCOM (research interview, 2012), WG’s key representatives clearly considered the WG as a direct successor of the ARGONA project’s Reference Group and as a part of RISCOM (and IPPA) activities in the Czech Republic (research interviews, 2011, 2012). Also according to the official IPPA report, “The Working Group was founded on the RISCOM principles” (Vojtěchová and Steinerová, 2013: 2) and RISCOM became the engine of the entire dialogue among stakeholders in the Czech siting process (Vojtěchová and Stein- erová, 2013: 22).15 The WG had therefore two faces, unrefl ectively combined together.16 It was to off er a RISCOM-like safe space – an environment where the participants could “meet, peacefully, without any extra goals... that could restrain or push the participants” (research interview, 2011).
At the same time, however, members of the group tried to develop the agenda of an advisory body (commenting legislation and policy materials).
The WG met eleven times between 2010 and 2013. However, already in 2011 there seemed to be growing frustration among members of the WG. Mayors of concerned municipalities increas- ingly felt that the entire dialogue had become empty and just for show. The Ministry of Industry and Trade was showing more and more neglect toward what was happening inside the WG,
which was repeatedly noted with uneasiness in minutes from WG’s meetings. While mayors often expressed their dissatisfaction relatively openly, similar attitudes were tacitly developing among the Ministry people too, which became fully mani- fested later on.
As a result, participants in the WG increasingly started to act beyond the group’s framework, which only contributed to mutual frustration.
Both mayors and NGO people complained that even if an agreement on something is achieved within the WG, it does not mean anything since it is sooner or later rolled over by informal backstage negotiations outside the WG. But they themselves started communicating outside the WG too, like in earlier times, for example by means of a separate and confi dential e-mail list. In this communica- tion some of the opposing mayors called the body a “Potemkin’s group”. The WG simply began eroding and overfl owing on several sides. Never- theless, the integrity of the WG was still kept by the repeated claim of RAWRA that it would not proceed with the planned site investigations against the will of concerned municipalities. This was taken as a key guarantee that ‘fair dialogue’, however ineff ective and emptied, would continue.
At the same time, partners of the EC-funded project talked in front of international audiences and in the project reports about the success of RISCOM in the Czech Republic (e.g., Andersson, 2012a).
The course of events got more dramatic in mid-2012. At that time, as a result of bilateral negotiations between RAWRA and individual municipalities and with the support of approved financial compensations, it seemed that local governments at two candidate sites were going to sign the contracts for site investigations. In response to this, local opposition intensified and new referendums eventually refused the site investigations. This was a blow for the state administration, which was apparently hoping that the site investigations might fi nally become more widely accepted and that further steps toward the repository could be taken. At that moment, in fact, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the parent institution of RAWRA, lost patience. Without prior caution it changed the direction back toward an authoritative, expert-driven decision-making. It
openly dissociated itself from RAWRA’s strategy focused on dialogue. It was decided to apply for the site investigations even without the consent of concerned municipalities, regardless of the key promise RAWRA repeatedly gave within the WG.17
The trust of municipalities and NGOs was deeply shaken by these events. They perceived the situation as a return to the years before the moratorium. The WG almost ceased working.
While RAWRA declared its interest in continuation of the WG, at least formally, the others hesitat- ingly agreed with further work on the condition that the status of the WG would change into a more action-oriented body. In addition, a back- ground material for the revision of the govern- mental “Strategy for nuclear waste management”
asked for a deep transformation of the existing WG too. It suggested, for instance, that those who are not seriously interested in “constructive negotiations” about the repository should be excluded from the WG (NRI, 2013). In short, the WG was most probably either going to be fully transformed into something else or completely abandoned.18 The IPPA project, presenting the WG as the RISCOM Reference Group, was to end in 2013. One of the last IPPA reports (elaborated by two Czech participants), in its Recommendation section, does not refer to RISCOM at all anymore (Vojtěchová and Steinerová, 2013). Experiments with dialogue among equals evaporated. ‘Clarifi - cation of arguments’ and ‘mutual understanding’, so emphasised by RISCOM, but followed inconsist- ently already before, were completely abandoned.
To sum up, it is clear that the trajectory that started under the auspices of EC and with RISCOM is over.19 This trajectory initially raised high hopes, but ultimately made all the participants of the process frustrated. RAWRA, as a key local proponent of RISCOM-like dialogue, got almost extirpated.20 Not only municipality representa- tives and activists, but also Ministry people and technical experts were increasingly dissatisfi ed with the situation.21 Much of the frustration came from what seemed to be an ineff ective dialogue leading to nowhere. And even the leader of the IPPA project and Swedish author of RISCOM suddenly started talking only with hesitation about how RISCOM was implemented in the Czech Republic (personal communication, 2013).
RISCOM as a widely applicable technology of participation was left, in this particular case, alone and questionable.
Translating the RISCOM model
How can we understand this RISCOM story? How can we interpret the attempt at transferring the model from one context to another as a complex movement of translation? A simple explanation of the failing dialogue described above might refer to diff erent political cultures, legal frame- works and other context conditions. In Sweden, for example, the municipalities involved in the sit- ing process have a relatively strong position com- pared to the municipalities in the Czech Republic.
In the Czech Republic, moreover, there are many municipalities on each preselected site, which makes negotiations more diffi cult than in sparsely populated areas of Sweden. In general, it is tempt- ing to assert that RISCOM failed because, being based on the highly advanced Swedish (or West- ern European) democracy, it simply did not fi t well into the specifi c Czech setting, with all the lega- cies of communist rule and with the blindness of Czech authorities and policy makers toward the centrality of the public in the entire process (Daw- son and Darst, 2006). Let us put, however, such explanations aside (which does not mean dismiss- ing them!) and try to understand the situation even more subtly.
How the Czech siting process and RISCOM became attractive to each other
When the Czech governmental moratorium was coming to an end, it was clear that the sit- ing process had to be restarted on new grounds.
However, RAWRA did not quite know what to do.
Although it already had the experience with pub- lic protests, which preceded the moratorium, it was still basically an engineering organization, full of technical specialists, without the experience of engaging in a public debate. In this situation, RISCOM came as a light at the end of a tunnel, showing a possible way to proceed out of the deadlocked situation. It provided an opportu- nity to start anew on a relatively widely accepted basis. In fact, RISCOM provided RAWRA with a new identity: with the help of ARGONA and related
eff orts, RAWRA became the main guarantor of the newly adopted approach and the dialogue with municipalities became its main mission. At this point in time, geological projects of RAWRA were suspended (see RAWRA Annual Reports 2004-6 available at SURAO, undated), and “everyone [at RAWRA] became engaged in communication with the public” (research interview with a RAWRA employee, 2011).
This transformation of RAWRA was necessarily limited. The personnel remained basically the same and it lacked sensitivity toward democra- tization in technical innovation.22 RISCOM, as a seemingly transferable ready-made procedure for how to facilitate public dialogue, therefore looked particularly attractive. By adopting the Swedish technology for public dialogue, RAWRA was able to replace the technocratic view that there are no reasons to involve the concerned municipalities with the conviction that achieving the consent of local people is something basically technical and manageable.
An important thing was that RISCOM came to the Czech Republic as ‘the Swedish model’.
Since the early stages of the Czech siting process, Sweden had often been referred to, implicitly and explicitly, as the role model in deep geological repository development.23 In official presenta- tions as well as in our interviews with Czech stake- holders it was implied that RISCOM was widely used in Sweden, and that it lead to successful siting of the repository. This was, let us remind, somewhat contradictory, first, to the original framing and practice of RISCOM events as experi- mental, and second, to the relatively marginal position that RISCOM had in Swedish radioactive waste management.
It was only perfect that RISCOM appeared as something imported, and not invented or designed by a direct participant in the dead- locked Czech situation. In the eyes of the public, RAWRA had been discredited by that time, and the concerned people did not trust the imple- menters. Anything ‘made by RAWRA’ would have seemed suspicious. Further, RISCOM was not just a product of a ‘third party’ (a well-tested product, it was believed), but it was introduced to the Czech situation together with a third party – i.e., international mediators, relatively detached from
the ongoing confl ict. This helped to neutralize the situation and get the involved parties to sit at one table again.
Not only the implementers regarded this Swedish import positively. Also the NGOs expressed a cautious optimism. Activists were unhappy with how the negotiations between RAWRA and the municipalities had been carried out, and they saw the introduction of RISCOM not only as “one of the fi rst attempts at transparency”, but also as an opportunity to show “how untrans- parent and wrong the way of doing the whole thing here” had been (research interview, 2013).
Furthermore, the activists often refer to Sweden as an example of a desirable voluntary approach;
the possibility of Swedish municipalities to decline the project throughout the entire siting process was appreciated and put in sharp contrast to the Czech reality.24 RISCOM, as ‘the Swedish approach’
was therefore welcomed also by other stake- holders.
The Czech situation at the time of the morato- rium was very attractive for the Swedish RISCOM implementer too – and for related reasons. The attractiveness (or “interessement”, as Callon (1986) would put it according to his sociology of trans- lation) was mutual. We mentioned above that the inventors and proponents of RISCOM had the ambition to systematically develop the model into a universally applicable procedure already in the early Swedish life of RISCOM. For them, European research and policy projects provided unique application opportunities. Post-commu- nist members of the EU constitute an especially good market for such services. Public delibera- tion in complex socio-technical controversies represents a relatively new challenge for policy makers in these countries. The state administra- tion is often unprepared for possible confl icts, lacking qualifi ed personnel and resources. And if it eventually happens, like in our story, that public initiatives get furious and irritated in response to some careless technocratic decision-making, policy makers become eager to participate in public involvement projects. No wonder that such countries provide a rewarding terrain for foreign public deliberation professionals, a genuine labo- ratory for testing new democratic approaches.
Adopting the RISCOM principles and making them empty: From stretching to safe space
When talking with the Czech participants it was clear that all of them had heard about RISCOM, or at least about ‘the Swedish approach’; but hardly anybody was able to explain what exactly RISCOM was and how it was supposed to work. RISCOM was therefore widely accepted in the new setting mainly as a general appeal toward fair dialogue, and not as a strict experimental or laboratory form of deliberation.
It was easy for the Czech stakeholders to adopt RISCOM in such a non-specific form, since everybody had been frustrated from the protracted non-communication and general distrust. The prospect of sitting around a table and just talking to each other, bounded by the rules of mutual respect and under the supervision of a relatively independent moderator, looked very refreshing and attractive (research interviews, 2011, 2013). Thus, the RISCOM framework became quickly accepted and shared by all the partici- pants without contestation – but only at the cost of losing important specifi cities of the model.
But RISCOM was not only de-specified, it was also emptied. As noted above, activities within the newly established stakeholder groups quickly turned into a dialogue for dialogue. In the beginning of the ARGONA project the stated aim was “to increase common knowledge of all aspects related to siting geological disposal with the goal to increase transparency and engage public in the decision-making process” (Minutes of the fi rst Reference Group meeting, 13 May 2008, available at SURAO (undated) – emphasis added).
This never really happened though. Whereas in Sweden some RISCOM activities included discus- sions about, for example, alternative technical options (such as deep boreholes), the Czech debate within the WG focused mainly on the status of the group itself and, generally, on how to strengthen the legal position of municipalities in the siting process. Geological and engineering aspects were left out of the debate, while the only relevant issue became how to obtain agreement with the concerned municipalities. Indeed,
“feelings of people” (NRI, 2013: 76), and not alter- native technical solutions, became the primary
target during this dialogue-phase of the siting process.
The tendency toward emptying the dialogue (by means of making it acceptable and workable in the new setting) can be observed in a number of ways. Let us take, for example, the following shift. In official presentations, the authors of RISCOM used to emphasize ‘stretching’ as a crucial concept and activity within the RISCOM model (Andersson, 2011, 2012b). Stretching is explained to mean publicly “testing and challenging the claims put forward by the proponent and the relevant authorities” (Westerlind and Andersson, 2004: 1). However, in our data we have not found any signs of stretching being actually applied during the Czech RISCOM activities. This concept is neither mentioned in any of the materials produced by the WG, nor was any of the meetings we have visited or heard of organized around stretching practices. Stretching simply did not seem to play any important role in the Czech part of the project.25
While the importance of ‘stretching’ was dimin- ishing during the introduction of RISCOM in the Czech Republic, another notion was gaining more and more signifi cance: the notion of ‘safe space’
(for dialogue).26 Safe space can be understood as a precondition for stretching; then it would be a space where participants do not feel threat- ened by possible confl icts and pressures to reach decisions so that stretching may become as chal- lenging as possible. However, without stretching, safe space easily becomes a space where nothing important happens – a space serving those who actually do not want to engage in an eff ective, change-producing dialogue. And this was far away from what the Czech stakeholders (not only municipalities and NGOs, but also the Ministry) ultimately expected from the dialogue. As already mentioned, the participants, as soon as their pleasure from dialogue in general had gone away, became frustrated by the fact that negotiations within the WG had almost no real consequences and the RISCOM-like space of the WG was simply
‘safe’ mainly for RAWRA.
Therefore, we can see that a shift in emphasis from ‘stretching’, which remained an opaque expression for the Czech participants, to ‘safe space’ contributed to a rather legitimate feeling
that the dialogue did not have direct impact on the situation. Let us remember, nonetheless, what was discussed in one of the earlier sections:
the RISCOM style of dialogue was by defi nition intended to be politically irrelevant, so to speak.
At least in terms of immediate consequences. As a deliberately laboratory dialogue, temporarily established outside of real-life politics, it is to be, in the sense of practical politics, for ‘nothing’. So where is the problem?
From a marginal, supplementary
procedure, to the main vehicle of political deliberation
RISCOM’s laboratory character was obvious and clearly articulated when RISCOM started its life in Sweden. Already the Swedish Dialogue pro- ject was explicitly organized as an experiment. It was organized as a role-play in which participants reviewed a fi ctitious application from the nuclear waste industry to build a repository at a hypo- thetical site. In the report the fi ctional character is emphasized in phrasings such as: “the trans- fer of the experiences from the project to a real review process will require a continued dialogue between the real actors” (SKI, 1993a: 12, emphasis added).
RISCOM organized within the ARGONA project in the Czech Republic resembled a ‘lab participa- tion’ exercise in many respects (Bogner, 2012): it was led by participation professionals; the partici- pants were made to sign formal agreements; it was organized in the context of a research project and funded by a third party; and it was well-docu- mented and subject of further research. The aim of ARGONA was “to test and apply approaches to transparency and participation in decision- making process within the participating countries”
(Vojtěchová, 2009: 3). All this was in line with previous RISCOM projects.
One important thing was different though, largely unnoticed.27 Originally, in Sweden, RISCOM was one of many forms of public dialogue or participation. As such, it was rather complemen- tary. As Elam et al. (2008) put it, RISCOM had the function of being repair work to SKB’s failures – by opening up issues that threatened the legiti- macy of the nuclear waste programme if they had continued being silenced and neglected
(Elam et al., 2008; see also Elam et al., 2010). Only under such conditions, the specific laboratory design of this procedure makes sense. Participa- tion in RISCOM provides a unique experience, not available ‘in the wild’, namely that it pulls the stakeholders out of the political turmoil, putting them into artifi cial conditions of a fair and safe Habermasian dialogue. Such dialogue may enrich participants’ perspectives, clarify their arguments and make them better prepared for practical political negotiations after the project is over. In order to work, therefore, the utopia of RISCOM has to be established temporarily and as a specifi c complement to real political negotiations. A dialogic exercise of this kind cannot replace actual negotiations and democratic decision-making. It makes sense only as an accompaniment of it, an extra with specifi c added value.28
In the Czech Republic, however, RISCOM became associated with the main and sometimes the only recognized form of actual public dialogue, the Working Group – a true showcase of the turn toward a more democratic approach.
Put differently, the distinction between the inside and the outside of the RISCOM space, emphasised by RISCOM inventors as the eff ective force of its approach, was not maintained in the Czech setting. The Czech RISCOM, contrary to the situation in Sweden, had simply no outside.
It became integral to the only recognized delib- erative forum, the WG. RISCOM’s possible specifi c import, as an experimental dialogue separated from real-life politics, could not be fulfi lled.
In conclusion: Democratic participation in and out of the laboratory
Was RISCOM translated successfully? Talking about success and failure is always a delicate thing: success or failure for whom and within what time frame? Seen as a clearly demarcated model, as a stable, strictly defi ned and tightly controlled experimental object, RISCOM can never fail. Its failure can always be explained by the fact that the RISCOM model was not implemented properly and as strictly as possible (and thus failure must be ascribed to something else).29 The actor-network logic of translation, however, imagines a diff erent
RISCOM. While travelling from case to case, from one country to another, RISCOM was being trans- formed by contributions of many hands, more or less directly responsible for these movements.
Especially when located far away from the Swedish reality, e.g., in meeting rooms in Prague, RISCOM quite visibly ceased to be an exclusive creation of its original authors, and was redefi ned and reshaped by other actors too. Most of the Czech participants did not actually intend to import a specific and rather supplementary element of a broad range of public involvement techniques. Instead, some were interested in RISCOM simply as an embodiment of the ‘success- fully’ accomplished process of siting in Sweden (not quite correctly); others saw it (quite mislead- ingly) as something associated with the spirit of voluntary approach, within which Swedish municipalities were treated with much more respect and care than was the case in the Czech Republic. Yet, it cannot be concluded that the Czech stakeholders simply misunderstood the essence of RISCOM, violated its key principles and, in fact, implemented – badly – something else.
The very original Swedish authors of RISCOM were pretty close to the entire translation process, an important part of it, indeed. They actively pursued their own interests while translating RISCOM along this particular trajectory, using all the respective transmutations for their own purposes.
These purposes had nothing to do with preserving RISCOM, at all costs, in its original contours, but rather with developing it into an internationally relevant tool that could be repeatedly applied and tested in diff erent countries (see, e.g., the IPPA project and its key reports).
How to understand the story of RISCOM’s translation then? Initially, the ARGONA project brought something really new and refreshing to the Czech situation. RISCOM off ered an attractive political fi ction, which seemed to bring a true and practical relief from serious personal and social tensions related to the deadlocked controversy and years-long moratorium. But this could not take long. Turned into a rather general appeal to fair dialogue and transparency, RISCOM soon became a rather empty deliberative exercise. This introduction of RISCOM into the Czech environ- ment, under the direct supervision of its authors,
deprived this peculiar lab-style dialogue from the only meaningful context it could have. Actors on both sides of the controversy got increasingly frustrated by what seemed just for show and without palpable results and at the same time the only platform for negotiations.
One should note that the Czech participants did not fully understand and appreciate the subtle potential impact of RISCOM, simply because they really could not do so – and the reason was not (just) that RISCOM was badly explained to them by its author, but rather that RISCOM had substantially changed: it had lost some of its specifi c contours and properties while relatively new emphases emerged. Originally, RISCOM was an avowedly laboratory experiment with quite limited, specific and subtle relevance in real-life politics. During the transport through two European projects to the postcommunist context it was translated into a universal technology that raised high expectations, which were necessarily betrayed later on. It came to be understood by the implementers as a major tool that would help them to obtain the consent of the concerned municipalities in a democratic way. It was, in fact, a matter of compromise on both sides: RISCOM was adopted in the Czech Republic only at the cost of becoming something else than originally intended in Sweden; RISCOM-related projects succeeded only due to betraying the strict version of RISCOM. This transformation of RISCOM was not an unanticipated side-eff ect of the travel but rather a key element of what made the transfer possible – only this new RISCOM could be inter- esting to the main Czech stakeholders, practically manageable and, in a specifi c way, successful. But, let us stress once more, it cannot be said that the Czech users simply mistook RISCOM for something else. Its key original author and designer did not leave RISCOM to its own destiny. He not only actively participated in the translation of the Swedish design of RISCOM into the Czech one, but was also dependent on the fact that these transla- tions were (as successful interventions) part of the EC-funded implementation projects. It has been, after all, by means of these projects that RISCOM was actually becoming internationally applied
“as a platform for decision making in [various]
complex issues” (Karita Research, undated).
With all respect toward the complexity of the above described movement we may therefore talk about a failed translation, a treason. As Callon (1991: 145) explains: “A successful process of trans- lation […] generates a shared space, equivalence and commensurability. It aligns. But an unsuc- cessful translation means that the players are no longer able to communicate. Through a process of alignment they reconfigure themselves in separate spaces with no common measure”. And this is exactly what happened in our case. Not only the identity of RISCOM was loosened and chal- lenged, so that one may doubt whether the model actually was not transformed into something else throughout the translation. The initial alignment of dialogue, so promising right after the end of moratorium, dissolved too: ultimately, RAWRA survived the collapse of dialogue only by another radical redefi nition of itself; the Ministry ‘forgot’
its constitutive relationship to the WG, while the WG started eroding and renegotiating its status;
RISCOM does not seem to have future in the Czech Republic – after all, the authors of RISCOM partly dissociated themselves from recent developments in this country. It is hard to tell, clearly and unam- biguously, who was responsible for the betrayal.
The translation defi nitely could have been done more faithfully, in collaboration with all partici- pating actors, but probably – given their partial perspectives and the complexity of the situation – not much better.
Several elements in the story of RISCOM fit surprisingly well together, quite seductively: the EU’s urge to strengthen democratic elements in socio-technical decision making; the ambition of a public deliberation professional to develop RISCOM into a universally applicable technology that can be transferred from case to case and from country to country; pressures to succeed in this kind of lab-participation projects;30 the compli- cated situation of the Czech government which wanted to overcome the resistance of concerned municipalities as quickly as possible and yet in a democratic way; mayors from concerned munici- palities and activists who desperately needed allies authoritative enough to push the Czech decision-makers to take their position seriously - these are just a few key circumstances of this complex case that have led to this understandable
misunderstanding and the resulting state of ‘lost- in-translation’.
More generally, we can see the story of RISCOM and of implementation projects such as ARGONA and IPPA as an example of a rather strong tendency toward technologization and speciali- zation of public involvement. This tendency is based on a recent relative success of pressures toward democratization of science and tech- nology (Felt et al., 2007; Liberatore, 2001). While it is widely recognized that decision-making in complex socio-technical arenas should be open to concerned lay publics, the long-established power practices are extremely resilient and it is diffi cult to replace them with a less technocratic political culture. Many therefore feel tempted to spread democratic governance by means of controlled and almost scientifi c implementation of ready- made procedures, models or techniques, fi rmly in grasp of experienced professionals.
This temptation seems especially strong in cases where a kind of democratic or delibera- tive defi cit is obvious. Here come genuine ‘tech- nologies of participation’: models of participative procedures, carefully orchestrated from above for those who are invited; but also, even more impor- tantly, models that are capable of travelling – i.e., that can be used, under specialized supervision, repeatedly and outside their original contexts. The technological nature of these political tools and their transferability go hand in hand, constituting each other. That is why we believe that paradoxes of invited participation, addressed by Bogner (2012) and many others, are particularly palpable in cases such as ours, when participative models are on the move. These are extreme and explicit examples of technologizing democracy that make it particularly visible how delicate and often ambiguous democratization of science and tech- nology is. We are not critical of RISCOM or other participative procedures per se. Rather, we have used the story of RISCOM travelling from Sweden to the Czech Republic to shed some light on the practice that, while building upon reasonable assumptions, often encourages too high expec- tations from, and unrefl ective handling of such political technologies.
Bogner’s (2012) analysis of ‘lab participation’
is of particular interest here. In his conclusions,
Bogner asserts that “[w]hile society at large is becoming a laboratory in which knowledge is produced,” in the form of “real-life experiments”,
“public participation is retreating from society into the lab”, taking place in seclusion and on a small scale (Bogner, 2012: 522). This is a relevant insight, indicating deeply paradoxical develop- ments in contemporary societies. The story of RISCOM reminds us, however, that the tension between the artifi cial world of laboratory and real- world conditions keeps its importance. RISCOM
probably does make sense as a laboratory experi- ment with certain impact in the real-world politics, at least in theory. Secluded laboratory setting still allows eff ects that cannot be achieved in the wild, out-there. Artifi cial conditions remain productive, even for experiments in participation, provided we understand (and preserve) the distinction between them and the real life. It was this distinc- tion which was lost in translating RISCOM from Sweden to the Czech Republic.
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